Vessel of Deception
by Roman Gaul
Summary: It's April, 2071, Seattle UCAS. Shadowrun. With Knight Errant recently installed as the Metroplex's new police force, Knight Inspector Haifa Ferzend, an ork ex SIM star, has been tasked with making the criminal syndicates of the Puyallup streets realize that the Knights are not to be trifled with.


**Vessel of Deception**

By: Roman Gaul (aka Graham Bonnington)

Knight Officer Haifa Ferzend zipped through the grimy streets of the Puyallup, the poorest district of the Seattle Metroplex. Her daughter, Sasha, was hospitalized earlier that day and she had yet to see her daughter. Police work daunted her as the new Knight Errant police force had yet to solidify their effective presence in the criminal world of Seattle.

Sasha's condition was unknown. She claimed she suffered from migraines and could hear music playing from thin air. The doctors suspected UGE. Sasha was a human and her mother, Haifa, an ork. UGE had always been suspected to occur in Sasha, changing her into an ork like her mother. However the girl was sixteen and long past the first stages of puberty. Some unknown spectral hand hid in her genes and the doctors were clueless.

Haifa drove a motorcycle known as a Cyclops, a motorized and fashionable unicycle that the driver could lean into, becoming as fast as the top of the line motor bikes of the day. The Cyclops was the only vehicle she owned. She decided on a new vehicle with her move to Seattle from Detroit. Knight Errant made it affordable to her as long as she wore the Knight Errant logo and colors on its sides.

Haifa's motorcycle helmet was subscribed to her COM unit that rested on her thin black belt that ran through the loops of her black and yellow Knight Errant jump suit. A COM call announced itself in her visor screen with a flashing spinning translucent red circle in the bottom left corner. The number was unknown.

"Answer it," she said as she kept her focus on the road. The circle faded into a red oscillation pattern, which was the default substitution for when the caller disabled their video feed. "Hello?"

"Glad to have caught you Inspector," the oscillation rumbled to the bass of a deep male voice, which Haifa did not recognize. "I haven't caught you at an inopportune time, have I?" His voice sounded playful and annoying like a bad approach at a bar, sleazy.

"What do you want?"

"I want to make a peace offering."

"Why?"

"For peace," he said. "You seem awfully perturbed, is everything ok?"

Haifa figured this man to work for a criminal organization. She guessed Mafia, but she had to be sure. "Tell me your name and I'll tell you my troubles."

The voice chuckled and whipped the oscillation from a dancing line to a bouncy cloud of red dots. "There is a party tonight and plenty of big names have been invited. There will be drugs, prostitutes, and I also heard that perhaps there might be bunraku prostitutes. It's a big illegal bash. All you need is the location and the rest will be there in drugged out bliss, completely dumbfounded and shit faced."

"Who?"

"One of your favorite subjects, the Yakuza."

"Where?"

"I need something from you, Inspector, before I give you that."

"What?"

"A promise. Stop looking into the current gun market," he said.

"I'm not sure I know what you are talking about."

"The guns," he said. "When compared to the memory erased women known as bunraku meat puppets, they are small potatoes."

Haifa thought back to Petrov, a man she arrested days ago who was buying guns enough to supply a small street army. They knew there were other caches stashed throughout Puyallup. "That's a tall order."

"It's Knight Errant's first week on the new job of being Seattle's police force and I know you need spectacle in order to make it look a success. This will give you drugs, syndicate members, and all their sundry dealings. You'll be able to hold leverage over them after this and make headway into your ongoing investigations into them, I'm sure. You want big? Want to keep the streets safe? Want good press? Then I'll tell you where it is if you make me that promise."

Haifa was quiet.

"And know this, Inspector," the voice said. "I remember those who don't keep promises, but if we are able to maintain this relationship, I can make sure your jails are filled with more syndicate scum."

"Then tell me your secret."

Loveland Puyallup had seen better days before Mount Rainers' top exploded and left a perpetual cake of ash covering the southern district of the Seattle Metroplex. Some days it would be as white as snow. On most days it was a gray and sandy puffy mix that fluttered in the air like down and crept into pockets and danced along strands of hair. Puyallup was a land that could be mistaken in most places as an ashy urban decaying desert. Clusters of communities piled up into each other for survival, leaving vast tracks of land desolate shells full of squatter camps that froze in the winter and burned in the summer. The land was also home to horrific denizens that lived in the basements of condemned buildings and sewers, feasting on the warm flesh of the helpless at night. Puyallup was a district best forgotten by the Seattle Metroplex, but people lived there regardless. Haifa knew she could make their lives better; at least she wanted to believe she could.

Loveland was one of the clumped communities, piled up around street known as Sugar Spoon Lane. Sugar Spoon sat close to the Fort Lewis UCAS military zone and welcomed its fair share of soldiers who sampled Sugar Spoon's various strip clubs and dens of drinking, gambling, and miscellaneous vice. The soldiers weren't the only patrons; Sugar Spoon served Yakuza, Mafia, and anyone with cred to spend. Loveland prospered.

One side of Sugar Spoon served Mafia and Mafia friendly strip clubs and bars and the other side Yakuza, held together by an uneasy truce. Knight-Inspector Haifa Ferzend was told by the anonymous tip that the party was at the "White Tea Room," a Yakuza establishment rumored to be holding a vast celebration for the passing of the torch from aged Haruki Ageda to the young and upcoming Sora Passeur of the Dungeness Crab Yakuza clan. Knight-Lieutenant Cork's apprehension was plain on his balding and chiseled face when Haifa called him with the tip. Knight-Inspector Ferzend assured him that she would verify the tip before the raid would commence, avoiding bad press from excessive force on a bad tip. Puyallup's police forces were already spread thin across the vast stretches of wasteland and huddled communities during what was known as Hell Week. Heads had to be busted and the criminals needed to realize that the new game in town wasn't going to be like the pushovers of the old police regime, Lone Star. A detachment of riot police lead by an ork woman known as Knight Luminous Truth would soon be on the scene out from Tacoma, waiting for Haifa's conformation before the raid would commence.

The cogs of Knight-Inspector Ferzend's mind began to create the foundations of a plan to get inside of the White Tea Room as her Cyclops zipped away from Tacoma and back into the dusty depths of Puyallup. Menus forming from her mental commands spread across the rims of her helmet's visor. She selected the hospital in Auburn, a middle class hub of Seattle, that her daughter stayed in and dialed the room. Her mother answered.

"Haifa," her mother, Talibah, said with a smile. Talibah flew in from Detroit earlier that day to stay with her granddaughter as Haifa worked. Haifa glanced at her face hovering in the corner of the helmet's visor. Her mother was her mirror image, twenty years older. "Are you on your way here?"

"Hey mom," Haifa said. "Work is calling me back. I don't know how late I'm going to be. How's Sasha?"

"She's performing well on her tests. I feel confident that she is awakened," her mother, an awakened Sufi shaman and Ares Macrotechnology corporate researcher, beamed. If Sasha were awakening, she could draw power from grimoirs and invoke spirits. The world "awakened" during the late days of 2011, when the first dragon was spotted over Mount Fuji.

"You know for sure?"

"They won't be finished until tomorrow, but I have seen many of these tests administered and Sasha is showing positive signs. Don't worry. Sasha is in good hands and I'll be here for her. Do what you have to do and don't worry."

"I really appreciate you coming over from Detroit to be with her."

"It's nothing. I'm glad to be here and Haifa, your father would be proud of you."

Haifa chewed her lower lip. Her father's death inspired her to be police, quitting her short, but promising career in SIM movies. "Bye."

Plan

Hide the fact I'm Knight Errant. Look like a party girl.

Get inside the White Tea room.

Find evidence of bunraku girls or at least enough illegal activity to warrant a raid.

Give the signal.

It seemed simple enough, but the logistics were an issue on short notice. Her bike pulled in to the first Stuffer Shack she found on the edge of Loveland. It was an automated convenience store run by a drone behind bullet proof glass. Its face was a black orb sitting on top a long white tentacle that rose from the ground behind the shielded counter. The store was empty.

Haifa navigated the five isles until she came upon an instant clothes dispenser. The drone behind the counter watched her intently as she pressed the buttons of the machine selecting a gray sweat suit. The machine churned with a loud "whoosh-whooshing" before emitting sweat pants and a sweater that smelled like thick warm plastic.

She put the sweats on in the store. The money instantly subtracted from her online account. They were big and bulky enough to hide any evidence of her uniformed jump suit. She thought scoping out the club from the outside would be enough. She doubted that, but hopped on her motorcycle and sped off to Sugar Spoon.

Minutes later she was surrounded on all sides by projected displays of dancing female flesh in various positions grinding on poles or faceless crotches hovering above the clubs on either side of the street. The volcanic ash in Loveland was thin, but remnants floated across the neon, yet life like, giant lust beacons. One side of the street boasted a wide selection of human and Japanese, while the Mafia side welcomed all ethnicities of elves, orks, trolls, humans. Some clubs had strippers in obvious cyberware while others promised awakened spectacles that was code for an involved light show.

Haifa parked across the street from the two story White Tea Room. It boasted no strippers nor elaborate projected signs. From what Haifa knew about the club, it promoted a muted pseudo speak easy feel. Men in suits or their close stylistic approximation stood in a line outside a door guarded by two ork bouncers, who were waving in two attractive Japanese humans in cocktail dresses, covered in a see through plastic coats that kept away stray ashes from their carefully manufactured figures.

Too high class, she thought. There would be no way she could get past the door as an ork in a gray sweat suit. Her head turned to the strip club parking-lot she had parked in. It was called "Luscious" and announced itself with projected life like images of a limber long black haired female elf and a dark skinned islander ork intertwining each other in black thongs with nipples hidden by the protective fingers of the opposite stripper. She had been inside before questioning a witness to a murder scene when she was in an advisory role before the transition to Knight-Errant from Lone Star. Haifa knew the proprietor, a retired Mafioso living out the rest of his life with a strip club. He treated his strippers with respect, something she figured rare on Sugar Spoon Lane

She placed her helmet in the compartment under the Cyclop's seat and combed her fingers through her hair, straightening it. There was a small line of young men of various meta-types in bright thick colored reds and blues that wrapped around and pronounced bicep and peck muscles. An Amerind Salish (Native American) ork Haifa knew as Victor and a troll with the arms of tree trunks named, Huffy, bounced the door.

"It's an even exchange fellas," Victor said to the line. "We're at full capacity. One guy out, one guy in."

The line mumbled. One brushed a fleck of ash off his shoulder.

Haifa walked past the line to Victor.

Victor's eyes betrayed a moment of surprise. "Good evening, Inspector," he said as she stopped in front of him. "Enjoying some lovely ladies on your night off?"

"I need a favor," she said.

Victor pursed his lips. His dark brown eyes focused on her with intense curiosity. "Never a cover charge for a woman such as yourself."

She cleared her throat. "There is some money in it for you, if you help me out."

"I'm all ears."

"I need a dress. Do any of the ladies have one I could borrow tonight?"

Victor leaned back. He crossed his arms, carefully sizing up the police officer or perhaps guessing her measurements.

"I'll give you a hundred and fifty for any dress I could wear," she said. "Plus any extra if it doesn't come back in the same condition I got it."

Victor glanced over at Huffy. The troll smiled a big toothy grin at the police officer with genuine affection. "You watch the door, Huffy. I'll be back in a few." Victor turned for the front door.

The troll nodded. "Nice to see you again, pretty lady."

"Looking strong as ever, Huffy." she said with a smile passing the troll into the club.

Luscious was packed. The strip club boasted three bars and each were attended by drones with long stretchy arms passing drinks to patrons. Flashing neon meter tall mobile drones motored along through the crowds with trays on top of their heads with drinks and food. Two women, a human and an ork took up the stage performing a patient and doctor routine. The patient, a red headed human, was bare chested and fondled by a dark African ork, still clothed in a doctor's outfit with no mid-drift and a skirt that betrayed a white thong. Black straps on their arms and legs overflowed with converted digital money to paper script enthusiastically waving from the patrons below. Their hoots and hollers dimmed out the thudding bass of the strippers' song. Victor led Haifa towards the back through a section of packed tables, but a hand grabbed her arm from a booth.

"Excuse me, Miss," a voice shouted over the din.

Haifa turned to see a human sitting alone in a booth on the outskirts of the packed stripper hungry crowd. He looked tall and his Adams apple hung from his throat like a swollen peach. His hair was neat short brown that wasn't afraid of a little gel and his face was clean and would be attractive past its current drunken leer. The man held a glass of blue liquid which he finished off with one tip.

"I need a refill," he said.

Victor turned and studied the man with a quick eye and took the glass from his hands with careful precision. "I'll send a message to the bar and they'll send another right out."

"I want the lady to do it."

"Sorry," Haifa said. "But I have to get ready for my performance."

The man smiled and his eyes drifted to a place of imagination. "You're going to be on tonight?"

"Oh yes," she said. "But I have to get ready."

He seemed very satisfied with this and offered a salute. Victor ushered her towards the back.

"Who was that?" she asked him before they reached the backstage door.

"A customer," Victor's lips grew heavy.

Haifa knew he was more than that, but she didn't want to press Victor about it. Not now.

In the empty dressing room, the dress was more than she ever imagined to be found backstage at a strip bar. The bodice was dark blue and faded into purple at the hem to her feet. The front of the dress reached the base of her neck. The arms bare, her back revealed, and an open slit down the side flirted with her left leg. Sporadic sparkles simulated a starry night at dusk and Haifa gawked at it in the mirror.

"This dress is amazing," she gasped as her bare feet dug into the carpet.

"I thought you'd like it," Victor smiled. "Fits you perfectly." His eyes wasted nothing.

She helped herself to make-up, which was light touch ups, and nothing too involved to take up more of her time. Her department was waiting on her after all. She floated to the shoes rack and pulled a pair of matching black leather heels. Victor stepped over, offering his shoulder to balance on as she wiggled her feet into them.

"So, a hundred and fifty, right?" she said.

"How bout you give me your number instead and you can take the dress for free, promising you'll return it in one piece."

She studied Victor. His face was clean shaven. His left tusk was an inch longer than the right. His chest was well defined under his skin tight white t-shirt and his arms were thick and heavy and his hands thoroughly calloused. The ork was a bouncer's bouncer that could give Huffy, the tree trunk troll outside, a run for his money. Victor towered over her like a boulder, a very handsome boulder.

"Wait here," she said, touching his chest gently. Haifa walked over to the make-up mirror and wrote her number with a stick of dark red lipstick on a white napkin. She handed it to him. "I'm going to be busy this week, but don't be afraid to call."

He committed the number to memory before putting it in his pocket.

"We can see through your eyes perfectly," Knight-Lieutenant Cork's gravelly voice rumbled through Knight-Inspector Haifa Ferzend's ears as she walked across Sugar Spoon Lane towards the line in front of the White Tea room. Her walk had changed from police officer to a woman on a night in the city in her new purple and blue dress of conservative sparkling evening stars on its threads.

"Mic check," Haifa mumbled to herself. Her heels clicked on the sidewalk.

"Loud and clear," Cork said.

Haifa's eyes were alpha grade cyberware, installed with heat and low-light vision that could be turned on or off from a mental command. Each set of full cybereyes came standard with camera and ears came with recorders. Her ears recorded and broadcasted all she heard. Haifa's head was installed with a COM unit that worked as a phone subscribed to her camera and audio recorder. Those watching would see through Haifa's eyes and hear through her ears. It wasn't much different from her SIM acting days, but this time she had a live audience, The Knight Errant police, and only one take.

A line of single white and Asian men in a mix of leather and dress jackets stood outside the White Tea Room. Haifa assumed nothing and stood at the end. The ork bouncers wore striped silver zoot suits. From around the corner of the building strolled a tall Japanese human male with two sleek silver obvious cyber-arms. Cybernetics was usually covered with synthetic flesh. Noriato's choice for silver arms was a fashion statement. His suit sleeves were ripped off and approximated a vest. Walking with the silver armed man were three other Japanese men who were shorter and less bulky in stature. Their eyes were narrow slits and they dared anyone in the line to make a scene while silver arms strolled past the bouncers without exchanging a word, entourage in tow through the front door.

"Noriato," Haifa said.

"So, the Shadow God is here, interesting," Cork mused Narioto's overblown nickname through the radio.

One of the bouncers beckoned Haifa with a wave of his hand. A sly smile crept through her lips as she ascended the steps to the front door ahead of the line where men's vision crawled around the curves of her body. A chill went down her spine. A catcall sung from an unknown admirer in the queue.

The bouncer waved a metal detector half heartily in-front of Haifa. She hid a small pistol in her purse and a taser taped carefully with duct tape to her right upper thigh, the slight bulge of it concealed behind her dangling shawl. The detector wailed no alarm and no cover charge demanded.

Inside, the White Tea room lived up to its name of being white. White marbled bars, clear glass tables with white leather seats, the dance floor was a polished white, and the walls were an off white with lines that mimicked the appearance of bamboo. Pictures of Japanese and Caucasian women adorned ubiquitously on every wall in varying states of undress or tasteful nudes alluring customers with prohibition style gangster fedoras, top hats, and bopper veils. The open balcony second floor was surrounded by private rooms protected by white paper walls that projected the shadows of patrons inside engaged in varying questionable styles intimacy. The lighting was a dimmed yellow and the dance floor strobed as electric bass pounded the dancers with tribal rhythms. The patrons were mostly human and Japanese. Many dressed in the throw back suits of similar fashion that the bouncers wore, but with finer and loose material more forgiving to dancers. Women wore dresses and skirts that harkened back to an idealized mid twentieth century westernized culture updated to a more liberal sexualized look, exposed midriffs, legs, cleavage that no twenties bopper would ever dare wear in public. Electric swirling and alive cybernetic tattoos of mermaids, zombies, spirals, and comic book fodder leaped and danced along skin. More than a handful wore sleek skin tight see-through one piece plastic jumpsuits that radiated with light that blurred out nipples and crotches with intensified stylistic dragons, cyber ninjas, and celestial beings.

Haifa wore no tattoos. Once she pondered the ankh, but chickened out on the artist's chair. She regretted that decision and doubted she would ever be brave enough for a second attempt with perhaps a different tattoo.

She found an empty bar stool and made it her home until she felt more integrated into the patrons. Haifa ordered a synthetic beer from the small bald Japanese bartender and he handed it to her in a frosted glass. The beer was smooth and cold. It did not have much flavor but the faintest hints of fake wheat and barley crushed underneath a strong fist of alcohol. She smiled at the bartender after her first drink and his face melted from stern observation to warm acceptance.

"Can I get you anything else?" he asked in Japanese.

"I'm fine for now," she responded in kind. "Thank you."

The waitresses, waiters, and bartenders were human. They were dressed to fit the theme of the 1930s big band, but the waitresses wore little more than stylized cocktail dresses, long naked legs, and bulging cleavage. The bouncers and security were orks, but their chests bulged of Kevlar under their suit jackets. Haifa expected to get some grief for her not fitting the human mold, but the warming bartender, who now favored her with a constant smile, and the light smattering of ork patrons eased the expectation of overt racism. The beauty of humans was on display here and even the humans would allow the orks to worship it tonight.

Past the sectioned off bar on the far side of the White Tea room lingered a staircase that ascended to the upper balcony guarded by two ork bouncers. The silver armed Shadow God passed the bouncers without hesitation with his sour faced entourage in tow.

"Any established yak at this party has got to be on the second floor," Knight-Lieutenant Cork said over the radio that was exclusive to Haifa's ear. The ground floor was decidedly legal and looked nothing like the bunraku sex den that the anonymous tip said over the phone. Knight-Errant didn't have enough yet to justify the raid, but reinforcements were still en-route and expecting a big payoff. "You've got to find a way up there," Cork said.

Haifa took a long sip from her beer. The young patrons at the bar were lost in their own huddled conversations. The seat cleared next to her and a young Japanese man in a fine tailored dark purple suit slid in next to her.

"Whiskey," he said to the bartender. The man turned towards Haifa and smiled. His suit jacket was open half way and the white button up was unbuttoned down to the top of his pecks where a tattoo of a dragon's claw caressed. His face glowed with a thin glossy sheen that reminded Haifa of baby oil. He flashed a thin ivory smile and his eyes took the shape of cool veneer. "Hello, I don't think I have ever seen you here before."

Haifa smiled at him and his eyes lit up with a shrouded excitement. "This is my first time."

"I hope it's not your last." He leaned on the bar next to her, glancing at the bartender still fixing his drink. "My name is Tarou, what's yours?"

"That's Tarou Oota," the female voice of Knight-Inspector Minoru said in Haifa's exclusive radio. She had been assigned to Haifa's unit for her knowledge of syndicates, specializing in Yakuza. Minoru was a holdover from the previous Seattle police force, Lone Star, and was also one of the very few orks in the precinct. "He's a Dungeness Crab soldier, half of the Oota brothers. The other Oota is Taro."

"Hasima," she said to Tarou.

"Hasima," his tongue tickled the syllables. "Where are you from, Hasima?" his eyes traced her leg through the revealing slit of her dress that was perpetually stuck in the color of sparkling dusk.

"Egypt." She lied. Haifa transferred to Seattle from Detroit, where she grew up. She knew she could play the part with her flawless Arabic tongue if called for. Her parents had traveled the world and surrounded Haifa with Arabic culture since she was baby.

"Egypt." He tickled the syllables again, seduced by the idea. "Are you here alone?" He picked up his whiskey from the bar and sipped it, his eyes never straying.

"My friends are on the dance floor. I wanted a drink before I joined them."

He glanced at her beer. "Starting off slow, huh? What's a drink you like besides beer?"

"Hmmm..." she rubbed the edge of her glass with a playful finger. "Well, if it's not beer then it's a martini."

"Martini," the words danced an encore in his mouth. He leaned towards the bartender. "Martini for lovely Hasima here." He turned back to her. "Do you like it wet and dirty?"

"A little dirty, very wet."

"A little dirty and." He leered, "very wet," he said to the bartender. "Well, maybe tonight won't be so bad after all."

"Oh?" Satisfaction swam through her muscles. Tarou fell for her trap and she only needed to play with him a little to find a reason for Knight Errant to raid the club.

"Family stuff," he said with a wave of his hand. "My brother is being an asshole. Perhaps a few drinks and some friendly conversation to forget the whole thing."

"What's wrong?"

Tarou distractingly glanced at an antique Rolex on his wrist. "Hey, there's an errand I have to run. I'll be back in a minute and perhaps you can join me upstairs later for a few drinks?"

"I would love to," she said. She knew that soon this would all be over once she saw what was hidden away from the main floor.

He breathed her in before setting his empty glass on the bar. Tarou winked at her and pushed away from the bar. The bartender served her martini to her on a white napkin. Haifa's tongue curled in her mouth as she wondered what her tolerance would be tonight. Have to take it slow, she thought, but I don't want to seem out of place. Haifa sipped thoroughly. The gin tasted top shelf and the bartender poured the right amount of olive oil.

A hooded figure studied her intently across from her at the bar connected to hers in a V shape. He looked to be a very rugged ork with dark red skin. Two thin horns poked out from his hood and his eyes weighed her with a thick orange haze. The patrons sitting next to him gave him a wide birth, but no one contested his presence.

"That face looks familiar," Minoru said through Haifa's exclusive radio. "Could you get a closer look?"

Haifa toyed with the end of her black bang, but the red skinned ork gave no indication for the reason of his stare. He did not seem playful, his face stuck in a state that bordered a cold simmering rage. Yet he held it back with a measured discipline that many could mistake for boredom.

"Ferzend," Cork said over the radio. "Conner, Delacroix, and I are in position. Knight Truth is ten minutes ETA."

The red skinned ork deliberately sipped his scotch and shifted his stare to the mesh of young bodies throbbing on the dance floor behind Haifa. A thin sigh of relief escaped her spine as the unsettling stare passed her like an unsatisfied grizzly straying from an unmolested hiker's camp.

"He certainly has teeth," Haifa said aloud. She took a long drink from her martini and rose from the bar chair, surrendering her seat to an anxious patron. Her eyes remained steel as she neared the red skinned ork. His left arm locked in front of his chest plucking his scotch like a ceremonial cup, staring at the dancers like a critic of fine art, but Haifa felt his peripheral vision.

"That's Yuu Ine," Minoru said from the safety of a Knight Errant van. "He only shows up when something has to be done, he doesn't do social outings. He's purely business." It was evident to Haifa that Yuu Ine was a special breed of ork, he was a Japanese subtype known as Oni. Oni was the Japanese word for demon, but the similarity was only skin deep to old folk legends. They were still people, but the name given to them by their human Japanese counterparts signified the massive hurdles and barriers of being truly accepted by their own country and people.

Haifa walked past Yuu Ine and towards the restrooms out of his line of sight. The crowd thinned as she reached the back of the club. Her eyes scanned the young and attractive human Asian faces sitting and making conversation in booths. None of them were Yakuza according to Minoru, at least none that she recognized. The big fish were upstairs and she had to find Tarou.

"Hasima," a voice shouted energetically from a corner booth close to an exit door near the bathroom hallway. Tarou leaned out of the side and two of the silver suited ork guards sat across from him. A small mirror covered with lines of snow sat on the table like a plate of potato skins. A guard licked his lips in anticipation, ignoring Hasima who glided towards them.

"Tarou," she said. "I wondered where you went."

"I told you I had to run an errand." He patted the seat next to him. Tarou's left hand sliced the cocain with quick loud chops and a line of it formed before Haifa sat down.

"Hell yeah," said one of the guards as Tarou slid the mirror under him.

"Do it quick, man," the other guard said. "We got to get back before someone notices."

"Relax," Tarou said. "It's a party. No one is gonna care a couple of my buds gets a bonus for working the shift tonight."

A loud snort ripped through the straw the guard pulled from his pocket. His serious demeanor broke into a childlike smile. "Wow!" He slapped the table. "You're my man, Tarou!" He licked his finger and swiped the residue from the mirror into his gums.

"Hey hurry up and get out of the way," the sober guard said as the high one pushed him out of the booth and danced in front of the table. Tarou smiled and clapped.

Tarou chopped up another line. "Guys, this here is my good friend, Hasima," he tickled the name with his tongue again. "She's from Egypt."

The dancing guard extended a hand. "Nice to meet you," Haifa shook it. The dancing guard stopped his jig and clapped. "Whoooo." He regained his composure with a smile on his face.

Tarou slid the mirror to the sober guard and he snorted it through the straw. The guard pounded the table with fierce appreciation before licking his finger and rubbing the residue into his gums.

"Hasima, you're next," said Tarou.

Haifa sipped her martini. "It's too early for me to start getting into that now."

Tarou's brow raised and he studied her.

"If I start now, I'll never come down," she said. "I learned a few years ago the value of pacing myself."

"You came out here to party, Hasima," Tarou said. "What's one line between friends?"

Haifa took the straw and drummed her fingers on the table cloth, building her courage. She had never done cocaine before, but knew what to expect. At least she thought she did.

"Is this your first time?" Tarou asked.

She nodded.

"You can do it," said one of the guards. "Ain't nothing to it."

"Put the straw to your nose," said Tarou. "When it's all up, pinch your other nostril and keep sucking till you don't feel it in your nostril anymore. For added effect, lick your finger over the residue and spread it in your gums. You'll love it. You've never been happier until you try it, BTLs don't do it justice."

She doubted that. Haifa took a deep breath and sucked the line up through her nose. It stung, but she kept sucking.

"You got it," Tarou said. "Now pinch your nostril."

Haifa rose from the table, pinching her other nostril closed and sucked the rest of the nova coke into her head. Her brain immediately felt fuzzy and light. She licked her finger and rubbed it across the mirror rubbing the residue into her gums and she floated away from the table. Haifa lost control of her smile and the edges of her lips extended to straining lengths she never thought possible.

The table cheered her as she stood dumbfounded with her back to them as the happiest she had ever felt as the mysterious Egyptian woman in the blue dusk evening dress glittering with stars known as Hasima. It felt as if the White Tea room was suddenly contained within her Nile River barge and she were the Queen. She knew it all to be a lie, but it was the happiest lie Haifa had ever told. She turned back towards Tarou, her leg slipping out of the slit in her dress. The men gawked at her.

"Tarou, let's dance" she commanded.

Tarou dumped the rest of the cocaine into a plastic bag and sealed it. He slipped it into his suit jacket pocket. "By your command, my glorious Pharaoh." He turned to the guards who were all smiles leaning on the opposite side of the booth. "Take care fellas."

One made devil horns with his hand stuck out his tongue.

"Ferzend," Cork said over the radio. "Remember, you got a job to do. Don't get carried away."

Haifa remembered, but the nova coke changed the equation. She felt she had to let it settle before pushing Tarou for more information. The police, her daughter, the criminals upstairs were becoming distant memories as she pulled the Yakuza soldier onto the dance floor. The swaying of bodies, the rise in temperature, the heat sizzled from the dance floor setting their skin to sweat and bead on the sides of their faces as bass heavy dance rhythms faded into the next. Her feet wouldn't stop and Tarou held her hips close to his crotch. They melted into one another. Her lingering unease of doubt washed away. Desire burned inside Tarou with the power of a hundred furnaces and it leaped into her heart and dripped through her stomach like lava. Hasima would give Tarou a chance tonight, but Hasima was still Haifa and Haifa was still in control. Haifa would stop Hasima from taking the next intimate step. She hoped.

Tarou's hands moved from her hips and inched for her chest and her arousal catapulted through her blood and exploded into her capillaries. Her hand stopped his and as the beat changed for the third time since they began dancing. She turned and leaned into his face.

"Drinks," she said. "I want to drink, upstairs."

Tarou rubbed a stray spec of glitter from her cheek. "As my lady commands."

He took Haifa by the hand and led her in a half skip towards the staircase. She glanced towards the bar on the bottom floor and noticed Yuu Inne's stool was occupied by a woman in a black lacy dress. Haifa had to focus through her euphoria and she had to stop her feet from pounding on the floor to the hypnotizing bass. She filtered out the music through her cybernetic ears and the bass silently vibrated her skin, pounding on her flesh to be let back into her eardrums. Tarou led her up past the guards on the bottom of the steps to the balcony above. The enveloping pounding of the bass retreated to the floor below where it was appreciated amongst the younger, non-Yakuza patrons.

Another bar lined the walls where Yakuza sat, drank, and snorted lines off prostitutes lying naked on the clear class eating tables. Minoru wowed over the radio. "There are so many of them," she said.

Haifa placed mental red Xs over each one that Minorou pointed, which was transmitted back to the surveillance van. They appeared above the Yakuza's heads as a digital scarlet letter that only Haifa and those plugged into her feed could see.

The waitresses wore various degrees of nudity. Some were naked. Others wore see-through with nothing covering them underneath. A few wore two piece bikinis. The women bartenders wore no shirts and surrendered a drink with a grope and a smile. Their tip jars were overflowing with paper money. The head count was twenty-one Yakuza according to Minoru. Red Xs littered Haifa's field of vision, she sat at a table with Tarou facing the open balcony. The stripper covered in cocaine was being sniffed by a Yakuza who had dropped his pants two tables down from her. All the women on the balcony were human, except Haifa.

"See," Tarou said, disappointed. "It's silly."

A naked Japanese waitress with a tray pressed against her thigh asked them what they wanted to drink and Tarou ordered another whiskey, a double. Haifa ordered another martini. A little dirty and very wet, Tarou pointed out to the waitress and she winked at him.

"What is the celebration all about?" Haifa asked with a cocaine smile on her face. "Or is this every day at the Tea Room?"

Tarou laughed. "We work hard, we party hard. It's to celebrate the changing of ownership from one of our fathers to some new blood."

"What are _you_, really?"

He gestured to the men who were still wearing their suits in varying degree of somber faces, cradled by smiling prostitutes and waitresses.

"You're a mobster."

"You're smart too."

"How often do you come here?"

"Often enough."

"Doesn't seem like your scene. You seem sad. Most of you do."

The naked waitress brought their drinks.

"What do I have to be sad about?" Tarou said. "I got my whiskey, sharing my night with the lovely Hasima. What could be wrong?" He gulped it down and yelled for another. "Tell me about you. How did you even get here without a date?"

Haifa sipped her martini. It tasted very dry. "What do you think I came here for? To dance or to party?" She winked at him and his hand found her thigh.

"Really, huh? And how does Hasima party?" he leaned in. "It was your first time on Nova Coke, but I surely see an animal in you."

She leaned into him. "I like to find the right place to lose myself."

"Well, I still have more powder and more places. Some with much less people."

"I mean chips," she said.

Tarou leaned his head to the side as if to see her better. "Chips?" His left hand raised towards her ear and he tucked one of Haifa's stray bangs.

"BTLs, mood chips." She smiled as he massaged the pointed tip of her ear.

"You are something else," he said. "You didn't strike me as a chip head."

She swatted his hand. "Enthusiast."

Tarou laughed. "Sorry."

The waitress brought his third whiskey. Tarou sipped on it. "You have trodes?" he asked her.

"I've got a datajack," she pointed to the slot behind her ear Tarou didn't fondle.

"Ah, cyberware," he said. "How much chrome are you packing?"

"Enough."

"So, you like BTLs," he said. "I can do that. What else?"

"I also like sex clubs," she said.

"Really? Now that I see."

"I once saw this bunraku act downtown."

Tarou's face sunk as if the whiskey made him sick. "Oh," He sat his drink on the table in a fit of disgust, but gathered himself and picked the whiskey up as he reclined back in his chair, his fingers fumbling through his hair. He smiled at her to forget his tell. "What was it like?"

"You sure you're ok?"

He leveled his eyes. "Tell me about it."

Haifa took another sip from her martini to buy her enough time for the lie. "It was at a place downtown that long since closed its doors. It was called 102 Madison, which was also the street address. It was bondage themed, but this one allowed the patrons to engage in intercourse in certain rooms. They also had a stage where they held performances every Sunday night. The place was invitation only. I dated a woman who worked there and she got me in. So, one Sunday they had a bunraku show. I was in the audience and they brought out these two women that barely looked of age. They had no expression on their faces. The master was the fat troll who took up half the stage and put these chips in them and they came to life, their faces changing into bright smiles. One had a chip of Marie Mercurial installed and she burst out into song, she was a good singer, and sounded just like 2050s Mercurial, same attitude and everything, but she was naked, singing, and the troll whipped her while she screamed for more between her verses. The other girl was another singer I wasn't too familiar with, but the two sung a duet while being whipped. After that, they sung opera, country, and then he made them hop around the stage like bunnies. The climax was when they brought out a brazier and the girls stuck their arms in the fire, they didn't scream."

Tarou's face was calm and still.

"I hear those chips wipe out your personality and the only thing you can become other than comatose is whatever they put inside of you."

"Yeah," Tarou mused absently.

"Are there any here?"

Tarou eyes glanced to his left. "No."

"That son of a bitch is lying," Knight-Lieutenant Cork shouted over her radio.

Haifa closed her eyes. The shout broke her concentration.

"Are you disappointed?" Tarou asked.

"No," Haifa said. "Sorry, but this martini is too dry," she handed it to him. "Try it. I think it's just gin."

Tarou sipped and made a face. "You're right," he placed it on the table. "Order yourself another," he rose from his seat.

"Where are you going?"

"To check on my brother."

"I didn't upset you, did I?"

"No, not at all."

"Come here." She pulled him close and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm having fun," she said and smiled.

Tarou's shoulders relaxed. "I'll check on my," Tarou's lips became heavy. "I'll check on something and I'll be back. Maybe we could get a private room?"

"Just as long as you bring one of these waitresses with you."

He smiled. "You keep surprising me." His finger tipped her chin and he turned, heading for the back. She watched him leave. Organized crime wasn't much in her home city of Detroit. Ares Macrotechnology had long since remade the city when it rose to considerable power because of the Ares Corporation's seemingly endless stream of money. Detroit was dominated by Knight Errant, Ares Macrotechnology's corporate security, police, and defense force. There wasn't much space for syndicates, but syndicate interests still sponsored gangs that laid claim to territory in the suburbs. Haifa first walked a beat and the most police action she got then was rounding up drunks and the occasional rich kid out vandalizing private property. When she graduated from college, Haifa was promoted to a homicide detective. The fact that her father was the former Knight-Commander of Detroit helped her rise to the position, but she proved she was no crony and performed beyond her duties, even while caring for her infant daughter as a single mother. She stuck to homicide before a short stint in vice where she had played the role of prostitute a few times to bust rival corporate executives rumored to be chip heads. The squad extorted them and Haifa wanted none of it. She went back to homicide. Being involved with the syndicate world of Seattle was a realm that enticed her with seductive and dangerous shadows that ran deep into the pockets of the "legally" wealthy.

"Excuse me," a startling voice said from behind her. She turned to see a handsome man in a white tailored suit and a light brown button down shirt. His hair was slicked back and his eyes were Caucasian, but his face was narrow and Japanese. Two golden datajacks lined the top of his right temple at his hair line. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

"That's ok," Haifa said.

"It's just that you seem to be the most radiant woman here," he smiled as he lifted her hand and kissed it.

Haifa blushed. "It's the dress. If half of these women up here wore one, then I'm sure there would be competition."

The man laughed with a polite rumble. "My name is Passeur, but you can call me Sora."

"Hasima," she said.

"What a lovely name."

"I hear this is your party."

"Is that what Tarou told you?"

"Well, he did mention it."

"It's for the old man as much as me, but the old man is being a grouch tonight. You know how stubborn some can get, but things are changing, and for the better. Tell me, is Tarou being a good host? I wondered where he wandered off to." He glanced around as if he might find him.

"He had to check on something."

"Oh yes," Sora said. "He'll be gone awhile. Why don't you join me in the back for a few drinks and you won't be burdened by such dismissive company."

"I'll give Tarou a few more minutes." She winked at him. "But I'll consider your offer." She placed a mental red X with a circle around it over his head.

"I do look forward to it," Passeur said and lowered her hand. He walked to another table of Yakuza for friendly small talk Haifa had already marked by Minoru's request.

"I think we have enough for a raid," Cork said in the radio.

Hafia spotted Noriato, The Shadow God, along the side balcony walk way sharing a small booth with Yuu Ine. Noriato's entourage were scattered amongst the surrounding booths, frowning at each other over beers.

"Give me more time, Lieutenant," Haifa said. "I see Noriato."

"Knight Truth is in position," Cork said. "We've coordinated our strategy. You don't have much time and with all the nova coke, prostitutes, and Tarou's lying eyes, I think we got ourselves a done deal. So make it quick. No fluff, Ferzend."

"Ten minutes is all I need," Haifa said. The tone in Cork's voice was strained and agitated. She noticed stress had built upon it since she stepped foot into the club. He didn't like her in here. Work hard and party had was what Tarou had said and she understood the seductive layer of the syndicate world and how easy it could be to get lost in their hazy clouds of satiating desires.

She drifted across the balcony with gin in hand. Haifa's brain was afloat in fluffy sugary clouds laced with perpetual euphoria. Her cybernetic ears focused on Noriato and Yuu Ine as they hollered over the bass driven music her cybernetic ear filtered out from the dance floor below. She occupied herself with a large paper wall with a bright light echoing the reflection of four people, humans, in intercourse behind it. She realized it was two men sharing two women or maybe the reverse.

"It is a problem," Yuu Ine said. "Bellvue is too much of a burden right now for our respective masters. They don't want you involved in anything outside of Puyallup."

"If we lose Bellvue, we'll lose the market," Noriato growled. "I can't believe they don't see it."

"They don't want the risk."

"I don't believe it."

"Believe it, Noriato-san. It costs too much of their money and with our new cops in black, they want to hold their cards close so they see how this new police force lands. The risk is too great."

"But there is a way to make the risk worth it, right?"

"Yes, they want double what they were already promised."

"Double!?"

"Either double or you are on your own in a very severe way."

"Damn fools."

"Watch it, Noriato-san. I understand your frustration, but show the Ringo respect."

The table was quiet. The men behind the paper wall Haifa stared at jack hammered the women from behind, their slender feminine arms intertwined with each other, mouths locked with sloppy tongues that formed a squirming bridge of shadows. She wondered if there was actual sex going on or if they were simply projections. She wanted glance at the table, but she could feel Yuu Ine's gaze penetrate her. She relaxed her posture and gulped a mouthful of gin. Her mind wanted to escape her body. The coke overwhelmed her and she knew over a dozen police officers were watching her every action behind her own eyes. She was a vessel, a drone, a machine. When Haifa slept her body would hum ever so quiet with the buzzing of cybernetics underneath her skin polished, oiled, and nurtured to a glow. 'Ha-sem-aah', Tarou played her name on the tip of her tongue entranced by what he felt a free spirit.

"I'll speak with them tomorrow," Noriato said.

"No, you will speak with me now."

There was another long pause. The women Haifa watched squeaked like bunnies. The men grunted and growled bestial.

"They will get their money," Noriato said. She heard him rise from the table along with his entourage. They strode past here and rumbled down the balcony steps. Haifa turned and faced Yuu Ine who was staring at her with cold dark eyes. She smiled at him, but his gaze didn't melt. Haifa sauntered over through Cork questioning her motives over her radio.

"Nariato is leaving the club," the new female voice of Knight Truth echoed in Haifa's mind.

"Let him go," Delacroix spoke over the radio. "We'll keep surveillance on him and see where he goes. He's more valuable to us now that we know he's up to something."

Haifa sat down in the booth across from Yuu Ine. It was still warm and dented by Noriato's presence. "See something you like?" she said in Japanese. Her hand danced around the rim of her glass of gin.

Yuu Ine smiled. His teeth were the bones of the back alleys, black at the gums, and a thin sheen of green coating his smile that was nothing short of primal, jagged, and unhindered by any illusion of straightness. "You're a very lovely woman."

"You're a very dark man." Her eyes met his glowing dark orange orbs that burned with Prometheus' fire.

"Thank you," he said. "I noticed you are Tarou's woman."

"Have you been paying that much attention to me?"

"Not many of your kind make it into this club, let alone on the balcony mixing drinks with Tarou Oota and Sora Passeur. You must be very talented."

Haifa could feel makings of a trp being laid out for her. Yuu Ine's eyes played with her as if she were some delicate feline, lured into appreciative hands, forgetting those hands were strong enough to snap a neck or crush a skull. Yuu Ine had to be cunning to survive in the Seattle Yakuza as an Oni, especially in running personal errands for Yakuza Oyabuns. She would have to turn the tables if she were to win the encounter.

"Do you appreciate being called Oni?" she asked.

Yuu Ine leaned back in his seat. His finger scratched his chin. "Quite the question."

"I expect quite the answer." She smirked, feeling confident Yuu Ine would not be able to regain his posture.

"What do you think?"

"I asked you first," she sipped her gin. "Since when can an Oni get to the second floor?"

Yuu Ine bristled. His sharp index finger nail pressed deep in the top of the table. "I grew up on the streets of Neo Tokyo. For people such as us, it wasn't easy. We couldn't get into schools, the police harassed us at every turn, we lived off garbage, and the children would team up to bully us. One day such a teenage group descended upon me with baseball bats. They just lost a game and were rightly pissed. They yelled 'kill the Oni' 'protect the pure' 'kill it so it doesn't rape.' I broke three of their necks and sent five others to the hospital and the rest that lived said from then on 'avoid the Oni' 'protect your hide' 'he can have our sister, just don't hurt us.' So yes, I enjoy it. They know what I am and they leave me alone or suffer well if they do not. Don't think twice you will ever be something more than the pretty Egyptian ork that will be trotted out from time to time like a trophy that is engraved with the words 'proof we care for the less fortunate'," Yuu Ine stood up. "So then, if you'll excuse me. It was a pleasure speaking with you," he bowed politely and walked past her towards the hallways of the backrooms.

She turned to watch him go and he did not look back. Yuu Ine disappeared behind a door guarded by two orks at the far end of the balcony. There was another door off to the left after the restrooms only guarded by one guard.

"What's next, Ferzend?" Cork asked.

"I have to see what's behind those doors."

The radio was silent. Haifa finished off her gin and stood, leaving the glass on the table. She floated on her feet towards the door with only one guard. He lifted a hand for her to stop and she did.

"I'm part of the show," she said.

The guard lowered his hand and opened the door for her and she stepped into a long dark hallway only vaguely illuminated by candle light dancing behind paper walls further down the corridor. The sounds of predator cats growling and squeaking in writhing ecstasy echoed. The dancing behind the paper walls was not of a disturbed flame, but of people locked in deep primal intercourse. A woman screamed in the void of flesh and was silenced a man moaning uninhibited.

Haifa started with the first door, a broom closet. The light inside was off, but the heat vision of Haifa's eyes kicked in and a warm glow of a woman's body revealed itself hidden in the back amongst hanging coats and mop buckets. The woman stared passed Haifa in a trance, long lost to time.

"A bunraku puppet," Cork said over the radio. "You found one."

Haifa marked a cross over her head inside of her video feed. She flipped the lights on to determine in detail her naked features. The woman's face lit up as the white light erupted inside of the closet. Her eyes exploded into a state of surprise and she hissed like a cat and leaped at Haifa with her hands like claws. Haifa caught her by the wrist and threw her out of the closet. The woman somersaulted into and landed on her feet against the other end of the hall. She snarled and darted on all fours down the corridor to the paper rooms.

"That's the signal," Haifa said. She darted for the door and pushed it open passing the guard. He said nothing as the door latched shut behind her. Haifa looked at the woman laughing naked on the table, still covered in cocaine, surrounded by four men with straws about to place one between her legs, she ducked into the women's restroom. It was empty and Haifa's head pounded with adrenaline as she slammed her fists on the sink counters. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin radiated with sweat, her lips were dark and red, and her eyes hummed lightning. Shouts boomed from out on the main floor and she knew the Knights had stormed in. Her mind was still at the party and she wanted to turn it off. Kept inside of a closet somewhere else in some seedy club, stood a woman without her mind, without the ability to reflect and to realize the meat they had become. Bunraku's had no say, no memory, just a vessel that would perform any task at any time with any method. Bunrakus were little more than sex dolls, but they breathed, blood pumped through their veins and made them warm to the touch. Men desired them, the goddess servants of submission. Many were told to do it for the betterment of their families, to cancel debts, or forced in against their wills. They had no choices and only the most skilled doctors could give those choices back to them.

"Have them arrest me," Haifa demanded. She straightened her dress as Cork gave her an affirmative. Pushing the restroom door open, Hasima viewed the scene in sudden shock. "Oh no!" she screamed as she saw the night of her life crumble down around her. Knights were shoving people with red Xs on their heads down to the ground around the bar and the naked prostitutes and waitresses were herded into the corner amongst extended arms that kept them at bay. Hasima bolted for the staircase running down as fast as her heeled feet could carry her. She was caught in the muscled arms of a woman, white haired Knight Luminous Truth. Luminous held her in a lock, surprised by the sudden delivery of Hasima's pounding fists on her shoulders as the Egyptian demanded to be let go and that she had done nothing wrong. Luminous handled her professionally to the ground. Hasima's face met the steps as she felt cuffs surround her wrists and snap.

Luminous leaned into her and her voice tickled Haifa's ear. "You impress me," she said. "Let me take you out for a beer sometime or perhaps martinis."


End file.
